Twenty Detroit Residents Charged in $34 Million Home Health Scheme

By Alyssa Gerace | December 11, 2013

Twenty Detroit-area residents were charged in early December for their roles in home health care and other schemes enacted in order to submit more than $34 million in false billing to Medicare, the Justice Department announced.

The defendants include physicians, owners and operators of companies, office employees and patient recruiters have been charged with submitting fraudulent claims for non-rendered services and paying kickbacks to obtain billable patients, according to court documents. Only one of the 20 defendants remains at large; the remainder were arrested or surrendered to authorities in early December.

Two medical doctors, Aaron Scott Goldfein and William Clay Sokoll, were both charged in an indictment with conspiring to commit health care fraud for their roles in a $5.4 million scheme to defraud Medicare by submitting fraudulent claims for physician home services that were not provided in United States v. Goldfein, et al. The fraudulent claims were submitted by Tri City Medical Centers P.C., a physician clinic that provides both in-home and outpatient health care services, the indictment alleges.

Three more individuals—Ali Elhorr, Lama Elhorr, and Kelly White—were charged in an indictment alleging conspiracy to commit health care fraud for their roles in an $11.5 million scheme to defraud Medicare by submitting fraudulent claims for physician home services that weren’t provided in United States v. Elhorr, et al. The fraudulent claims were submitted by House Calls Physicians P.L.L.C., the indictment alleges.

Ten individuals were charged with conspiracy to commit health care fraud or conspiracy to pay and receive illegal kickbacks for their roles in a $7 million scheme to defraud Medicare in United States v. Khan, et al. The defendants charged in the indictment are Walayat Khan, Adelina Herrero, Amer Ehsan, Haroon Ur Rashid, Mohammad Rafiq, Salman Ali Sapru, Farhan Khan, James Zadorski, Cynthia Bell, and John Sanders.

The indictment alleges that the defendants caused the submission of fraudulent claims to Medicare for medically unnecessary home health care services and paid kickbacks in the form of cash payments and prescription narcotics to Medicare beneficiaries for using their Medicare beneficiary numbers, along with physicians receiving kickbacks in the form of cash payments to certify Medicare beneficiaries for medically unnecessary home health care services.

Two more individuals, Zia Hassan and Nathaniel Miller, were charged in United States v. Hassan, et al., with conspiracy to commit health care fraud and conspiracy to pay and receive illegal kickbacks for their roles in a $4.5 million scheme to defraud Medicare by submission fraudulent claims for medically unnecessary home health care services and paying kickbacks in the form of cash payments to beneficiaries for the use of their Medicare beneficiary numbers. Cherish Home Health Services LLC submitted the fraudulent claims.

Nassem Minhas, owner of home health care agency Tricounty Home Care Services, was charged for his role in a $5.7 million scheme to defraud Medicare through submitting false claims for medically unnecessary home health care services and paying kickbacks to marketers to recruit Medicaid beneficiaries and certify them for unnecessary services.

Two owners of a Detroit-area billing company were also charged for a fraud scheme involving chiropractic and psychotherapy services.